Redside... Best side? Right??

[Coyotedancer]

Alright, I'm going to start off by qualifying this a little... While I do prefer red side, generally, I don't play Big Bad Villains. My CoV characters are, to a one, Rogues. They were rogues-in-concept years before rogues-as-an-alignment were introduced.  I actively avoid the mission arcs and contacts that would make them act like complete bloody monsters.

 

Selfish? That's fine.

Untrustworthy? Well... yeah. The Isles are just that kind'a place.

Up to no good? Define "good"...

Interested in furthering THEIR OWN GOALS over Recluse's? Absolutely!

 

Being a murderer or a world-destroying terror? Err. No. Not so much. The world is, after all, where they keep all their stuff.

 

Anyway.  I find myself liking the content that was added late in the game's commercial run. We get to plot, and scheme and make our own plans... and we get to KEEP the things we gain by doing so. At least on proverbial paper. (My main back-in-the-day was all about her new ship, for instance. And I was giddy that the old devs actually let our red-siders keep it at the end of that signature arc. I fully expected us to lose it, like CoV characters tend to lose any other potential gains they might make along the way, in way too many arcs. If the game hadn't ended, I hope it would have been mentioned again in later content, or that we would get to use it again.)

 

So... I want to see more of that kind of content. I think it would go a long way towards getting rid of the impression that a lot of players seem to have of the red side being "Oh, It's just City of Minions. Red-side characters are all chumps working for The Man".

 

 

 

 

Edited January 21 by Coyotedancer

[Rudra]

20 minutes ago, macskull said:

There are gaps in the strike forces redside as well. Task Force Commander has a nice progression every 5 levels, but that progression just isn't there for villains.

Once you hit level 15, yes there is. All levels starting at 15 are covered.

 

Virgil Tarikoss in Cap au Diable:   15-20

Silver Mantis in Sharkhead Isle:   20-25

Mortimer Kal in Sharkhead Isle:  20-40

Operative Renault in Sharkhead Isle: 25-30

Ice Mistral in St. Martial: 35-40

Dr. Aeon in Cap au Diable: 35-50

Barracuda in Grandville: 45-50

Lord Recluse in Grandville: 45-50

 

Sure, blue side gets 17 Task Forces to red side's 8, but at least 4 of those are Shadow Shard ones. (I am not counting TFs/SFs that are co-op like Lady Grey, Apex, and Tin Mage Mk. II.) I grant blue side has much more variety. However, if a player wants to, (s)he can level up just doing SFs starting at level 15. (An 8-15 SF would help equalize things though.)

[macskull]

7 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Once you hit level 15, yes there is. All levels starting at 15 are covered.

 

Virgil Tarikoss in Cap au Diable:   15-20

Silver Mantis in Sharkhead Isle:   20-25

Mortimer Kal in Sharkhead Isle:  20-40

Operative Renault in Sharkhead Isle: 25-30

Ice Mistral in St. Martial: 35-40

Dr. Aeon in Cap au Diable: 35-50

Barracuda in Grandville: 45-50

Lord Recluse in Grandville: 45-50

 

Sure, blue side gets 17 Task Forces to red side's 8, but at least 4 of those are Shadow Shard ones. (I am not counting TFs/SFs that are co-op like Lady Grey, Apex, and Tin Mage Mk. II.) I grant blue side has much more variety. However, if a player wants to, (s)he can level up just doing SFs starting at level 15. (An 8-15 SF would help equalize things though.)

That's missing 10-15, and sure there's coverage past that point, but it's not in the neat 5-level increments like heroside gets (specifically missing the 30-35). Hell, there's also the 40-45 range, which is covered by the shadow shard TFs heroside.

 

I guess the point is there's a lot more content - and therefore a lot more variety - blueside, and I can't really think of a good incentive that would bring more people to play villains. Hell, even the current chance at 500 million inf d-sync roulette on the Aeon SF isn't enough to get significant numbers of people there.

Edited January 21 by macskull

[Tatterhood]

3 hours ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

At the very least you have Redside arcs like Bane Spider Ruben that give superficial dialog choices which enable you to take the prize at the end for yourself, or the Radio mission which (as far as I know, uniquely) gives you an actual choice whether or not to take a certain route or not.

The finale of Marshal Brass's first arc also has the same "intentionally wait out mission timer for alternate ending" mechanic as that Radio mission.

Edited January 21 by Tatterhood

[Rudra]

29 minutes ago, macskull said:

That's missing 10-15, and sure there's coverage past that point, but it's not in the neat 5-level increments like heroside gets (specifically missing the 30-35). Hell, there's also the 40-45 range, which is covered by the shadow shard TFs heroside.

 

I guess the point is there's a lot more content - and therefore a lot more variety - blueside, and I can't really think of a good incentive that would bring more people to play villains. Hell, even the current chance at 500 million inf d-sync roulette on the Aeon SF isn't enough to get significant numbers of people there.

Blue side isn't in neat 5-level increments either.

 

Positron: 8-15 and 11-16

Synapse: 15-20

Penelope Yin: 20-25

Admiral Sutter: 20-40

Moonfire: 23-28 (Kheldians only for team lead?)

Citadel: 25-30

Ernesto Hess: 25-30

Katie Hannon: 30-34

Manticore: 30-35

Numina: 35-40

Dr. Quaterfield: 40-50

Sara Moore: 40-50

Justin Augustine: 44-50

Faathim: 44-50

Ms. Liberty: 45-50

Dr. Kahn: 45-50

 

Blue side has two advantages in TFs. An 8-15 TF, and a whopping 17 total TFs that are not co-op for players to choose from for variety.

[Terenos]

Reading through this, I'm starting to realize I must be some sort of rare unicorn: I love Red Side, and play it almost exclusively. I started playing when CoV came out back in the day (after all, how many sandbox games at the time gave you the option to play as a villain?), so I never had the experience of starting out Blue Side - my first impressions of the game were breaking out of jail and coming off the boat in Mercy. From there, it's fighting snakes, trying to figure out what this whole "Destined One" subplot was and adapting my character's simple backstory around elements from the quests, all the way up to the Patron missions and beyond.

 

The first time I went to Blue Side (I believe, and I could be wrong about this because it was awhile ago, that there was a point where you couldn't actually play CoH if you only owned CoV and vice-versa) I found it confusing. And boring. There was so much filler content, so many delivery missions, and way, way too many contacts with no real path through an over-aching story. Everything about Blue felt disjointed, and the writing for a lot of the arcs you ended up doing was awful. I remember thinking, "My god, why would anyone want to play this side?"

 

I've since taken characters all the way through Blue, but beyond a few key contacts that were written/introduced much later in the game's life cycle, I couldn't tell you what I was doing or how those stories shaped the way I conceptualized my character. So, to this day, if I plan on playing/leveling a character, I tend to start Red Side, and then only switch to Rogue/Vigilante if I want to do TFs.

 

So why do I think people prefer blue to red? I think a lot of this has to do with familiarity. I know how Red Side is put together basically by heart, so I'm extremely disoriented when I play Blue Side. I quite literally have to go to a wiki to navigate to certain places Blue side. I know almost all of the contacts and their stories Red Side (and there are a few who I will never visit again, Westin Phipps being the ones who come to mind most readily - I had to take a shower after finishing his arc all those years ago, and it obviously still sticks with me), so I know which ones will fit my character concepts and which ones won't as I RP in my head (as well as those I just want to re-visit and re-read). I also really enjoy (in a broad, general sense) the design of almost all the original SFs - good mission diversity, and very few of the missions ever feel like filler (I'm looking at you Citadel TF, with your pointless, endless Council Base jumps).

 

I imagine familiarity like this is one reason a lot of people prefer Blue Side over Red; it's like a warm blanket, and there's very little you can do to make people want to try a different blanket when they already have one that's their favorite.

 

How could you encourage people to play or try Red Side? I think the best suggestion I've seen in this thread is to get rid of the restrictions for travel and grouping.

 

One of the hardest things about forming groups for SFs (to my memory, it's been a bit since I've wanted to go to the trouble) is getting people over to the right "side" for the group to even work. Assuming the player is even willing to do it, having them have to go to Null, change to a compatible alignment, and then get to a zone where you can even invite them (and hope they don't accidentally go back to a Blue Zone) is so many hoops. As a result, a lot of people probably never even set foot in the isles as a character with actual levels, so the experience of Red Side is always going to be basically 1-15.

 

The other really great suggestion I've seen is to add a lower level SF, similar to the Positron TF. Wretch doesn't have an SF, but neither do most of the Patrons - Scirocco could be a better early option, since he makes an early appearance during the Hearts of Darkness tutorial questline, so he obviously has some canon interest in interacting with new Villains (this would also help to establish more contact with the "big names" of Arachnos earlier to better reinforce their presence in the early levels - as it stands, your first major interaction with the higher ups isn't until level 20 and Silver Mantis).

 

tldr; I think lowering the threshold for interacting with the Rogue Isles and encouraging earlier level teaming on content that's compelling to the Destined Ones story would go a long way to improving Red Side representation.

 

Moving a bit from the more helpful general suggestions - from an RP and story standpoint (and I think this is probably where people will disagree with me), I think there's a block for people who started on the Hero Side in that the story (insofar as their is one for Heroes) and most arcs never really force you to examine your character's place in the world-building or your character's motivations - you are a hero, you do good. If you want a satisfying RP experience Red Side, you have to meet the established story half-way, or ignore it completely. Being a Villain in the Rogue Isles is less of a sandbox than being a Hero in Paragon City - the story for the Villain game is built more like a traditional MMO, in that it makes certain assumptions for and about your character that the Hero side of the game does not.

Edited January 21 by Terenos

[Alchemystic]

6 hours ago, Greycat said:

 

 

 

 

Didn't see this! At least I'm not alone in thinking the old PvP zones have untapped PvE potential 😅

[nihilii]

Ahh! I, too, was pulled in by the @Troo vortex.

On this particular topic I am strongly opinionated: incentives, incentives, incentives.

An infinite amount of effort can be deployed into tweaking existing new content and creating even more stuff, to reverse the tide of a wave we intuit (most of us prefer to be the hero than the villain).

OR

We can look at one global variable, adjust it and see if it moves the needle.

Namely, I wish we had a dynamic global XP and rewards buff for villains. Say, adjusted weekly. Start it at x2. See if people move to redside. If they do, do nothing. If they don't, crank it up to x3 the following week. Do this until we reach parity, or whatever arbitrary split we're happy with.

 

The love for AE strongly hints reward rate is an excellent motivator in guiding player behavior.

[Clave Dark 5]

"Redside... Best side? Right??"   Yes.  End of thread.

 

Seriously though, it always was for me.  I could list why, but that's neither here nor there for this discussion.  I can understand that some just feel some reversion to playing bad guys (funny, in an age when Grand Theft Auto can make billions, but of course that group of players doesn't necessarily overlap with ours), but I think ultimately that population is king.  That's why even I'm mostly blueside today, and have been since the Live pop drop and Incarnate grinding leeched most people away from anything lower level.  I like PUGing and find it especially needed as a low level toon.

 

What to do?  I don't want to make red side Farmville, so I don't know if "bribe the players with more XP" or something would help.  The Aeon task force is popular as all get out, but with people from blue side who switch to play then switch right back I'm sure; maybe gate that so you can't do it until after you've been red side for like 48 hours?  Maybe gate Null him or herself?  Aeon's still just farming anyway, essentially (thanks to speed runs etc.).  I doubt that would really work...  I guess don't have any really good ideas.

[Scarlet Shocker]

I think when we talk about good vs evil we're forgetting something important about human psychology.

 

Most people do not consider themselves evil, even if they feel it's necessary to do bad things; the ends justify the means. History is generally the judge on the grander scale. There are of course exceptions and I'm sure some of you will go "Yeah but x,y or z did stuff..." which is to entirely miss the point. Most ordinary folks think they are pretty ok just doing what they need to in order to get on.

 

That in one sense encapsulates the "villain" PC in the Rogue Isles. From the moment your PC is busted out of the Zig (how did you get there in the first place?) it's almost accidental. When we learn that Recluse is looking for exceptional people to make his new champions, we can look back and think he almost opened a list of names at random and said "that one!" which happens to be you.

 

In CoV we aren't called on to have to make hard moral choices. I was lucky enough to interview War Witch back in 2008, and part of that conversation included the fact they were quite conscious of the fact that they needed to keep the evil villainy down to a certain level to avoid being given an unwelcome age certificate. She told me of the proto-Praetorian villain group (this was long before GR remember)  and I don't recall their names but they were done up in bondage gear and served one of the signature alternate earth villains. The certification team took one look at them and said "age 16!"

 

The point of that story is to remind us of the real world constraints the dev team were under at the time to produce a family friendly game dealing with super-powered villains. Comics have struggled with it for decades too - how do you make your bad guys bad without actually doing really awful things. This was in a world before some more violent games were available.

 

There was a practical consideration which we need to take on board in terms of the game's history and with that in mind I'm happy to "forgive" a lot; and I still maintain that some of the great red arcs are up there with the best content in the game even if sometimes our villain PCs are carried along on a tide rather than pro-active.

 

Being swept along by a story without too much agency is one of the bigger issues we face both blue and red side. We perhaps feel we have more agency hero side simply because there's more content we can choose to do something different but in CoV that's less easy. It was addressed very well in GR with the conscious decisions to give and make hard choices which makes it more satisfying in many ways.

 

If you don't feel villainous enough, well to a certain extent that's up to you as a player. We're left with many holes in our story that we fill in ourselves - backstory, origin, home life, even down to where in the zones we "live" - so it's no great leap to imagineer that we've done many more nefarious things than the game explicitly says we've done. We can easily imagine that the opponent minion/lt/boss we've just "defeated" is now known forever as Corpsy McCorpseFace because he arrived at the medical facilities several pieces at prolonged intervals.

 

Now we're in different hands and new story tools are available perhaps that will change, but I don't anticipate a rush of "evil" villain content. But we are where we are and although I've said it before I will say it again; We got our game back, so there's that!

[Chrono-Bot]

Hm. There's a lot less amenities Redside/navigation is more hostile so that unless I'm specifically 'this is a villain only concept', I'm more likely to drop them heroside just to make life easier on myself. Nerva's entire... Nerva and the fact that a lot of Sharkhead missions are nearly death sentences to enter is an issue.

 

No complaints about the content though, nice range of stories you can do. 

 

EDIT: Elaborating a bit.

 

In Sharkhead's case, it has a lot of missions in the graveyard where at the level you're getting them the entrances will have very close purple mobs. It's really unkind to people with poor 3d navigation skills and I'm often the only survivor of my team when the zoning in finishes, thanks to dots. A lot of those missions don't need to be at those graveyard entrances either, so it would make sense to give them a safer mission door for players.

 

In Nerva's case, it's the longest map in the game as far as I can tell (or at least feels like it) and regularly has missions as far apart as possible. I'm not sure why so many of them are way up there - and the helicopter isn't always as helpful as it could be.

 

The amenities thing is a more about the useful stuff being spread further apart than it is on blueside. Or not present at all.

Edited January 21 by Chrono-Bot

[Greycat]

3 hours ago, nihilii said:

Namely, I wish we had a dynamic global XP and rewards buff for villains. Say, adjusted weekly. Start it at x2. See if people move to redside. If they do, do nothing. If they don't, crank it up to x3 the following week. Do this until we reach parity, or whatever arbitrary split we're happy with.

 

The love for AE strongly hints reward rate is an excellent motivator in guiding player behavior.

 

I don't think this would really do anything other than turn redside into farmside. Especially for those of us who just don't find it enjoyable for all the reasons listed.

 

AE's farming is more a question... yes, of rewards, since inf/drops/optimized builds and farms... but of people having seen all the content and/or coming from places that have the "the game begins at max level" mentality, or just wanting to handle everything at max power versus "i have two slots in this power and one SO."

 

Doing some sort of "redside XP boost" doesn't mean people will be playing redside, or enjoy redside. They'll see the gull in Pocket D and get farmed up, just like they do when they want the patron pool powers - hop over, get what they need, hop back. Those are tourists, not redsiders.

[nihilii]

To be sure, it's possible to say this will never work as long as we refuse to try it at all. 😅

 

Personally, I believe in inertia and friction. If nothing else because I see it in my own behavior; I create most characters as villains for the easy +5% hp mayhem accolade while leveling. Then it's not like I rush to the gull once I'm 45+ and accoladed up, I just move to hero once I want to do something hero-side.

 

It's a lot easier to slide into other content if you're already there than if you have no incentive whatsoever to do so.

For most other players the equation differs because they're more likely to team than I am. People are heroside, so people move heroside.

But once there's a critical mass of people who are already on villainside for the XP, what happens next?

My guess is we'd see nonzero (and significant) retention.

 

In fact I would bet everything I have the #1 criteria for the average user is "be where most people are". Hence the playerbase eventually congregating towards Excelsior. Nothing else matters as much as this dynamic, so it takes radical changes to reverse it.

[Troo]

2 hours ago, Greycat said:

Doing some sort of "redside XP boost" doesn't mean people will be playing redside, or enjoy redside. They'll see the gull in Pocket D and get farmed up, just like they do when they want the patron pool powers - hop over, get what they need, hop back. Those are tourists, not redsiders.

 

A subtle incentive that encourages any percentage of players to take a look at Redside wouldn't really hurt...

Redside is a bunch more content/zones/etc just sitting there to be capitalized on.

Boosts are simply levers and therefore require less effort than significant changes. (Easier to walk back also)

 

1 hour ago, nihilii said:

My guess is we'd see nonzero (and significant) retention.

 

^^

 

 

6 hours ago, nihilii said:

Ahh! I, too, was pulled in by the @Troo vortex.

 

reasonable voices quoted to help explain the nuanced differences they see. 🙂

[Lunar Ronin]

7 hours ago, Terenos said:

The first time I went to Blue Side (I believe, and I could be wrong about this because it was awhile ago, that there was a point where you couldn't actually play CoH if you only owned CoV and vice-versa) I found it confusing. And boring. There was so much filler content, so many delivery missions, and way, way too many contacts with no real path through an over-aching story. Everything about Blue felt disjointed, and the writing for a lot of the arcs you ended up doing was awful. I remember thinking, "My god, why would anyone want to play this side?"

 

 

I started playing City of Heroes before City of Villains launched, and I still ask myself to this day: "Why would anyone want to play blue side?"   Like you said, tons of filler content, tons of delivery missions, too many zones, dull and boring.  Everything from Issues 0 and 1 are terrible, which is the majority of blue side content to this day.  And Atlas Park... I hate Atlas Park.  Too shiny, too bright, too many people, too dull.  Even when I did play blue side back on live, I avoided Atlas Park as much as humanly possible.

 

This thread has been interesting, because most of the complaints in regards to red side are reasons why I love it.  There's no hub zone, so there's no massive glut of PCs like Atlas Park to avoid.  There's fewer, more compact zones to travel.  The zones are more dingy, thus feel more real.  St. Martial reminds me a lot of Atlantic City in real life.  It has the glamorous casinos... and the rest isn't so glamorous.  As for the lack of agency... I never saw much agency blue side either.  You either perform heroics, or you don't.

 

To each his or her own.

[ranagrande]

Is this even a problem that needs to be fixed?  I've always thought that one of the things that made red side the best side was that it has less people.

 

But maybe I'm just a more antisocial villain.

[Cobalt Azurean]

28 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

 

I started playing City of Heroes before City of Villains launched, and I still ask myself to this day: "Why would anyone want to play blue side?"   Like you said, tons of filler content, tons of delivery missions, too many zones, dull and boring.  Everything from Issues 0 and 1 are terrible, which is the majority of blue side content to this day.  And Atlas Park... I hate Atlas Park.  Too shiny, too bright, too many people, too dull.  Even when I did play blue side back on live, I avoided Atlas Park as much as humanly possible.

 

This thread has been interesting, because most of the complaints in regards to red side are reasons why I love it.  There's no hub zone, so there's no massive glut of PCs like Atlas Park to avoid.  There's fewer, more compact zones to travel.  The zones are more dingy, thus feel more real.  St. Martial reminds me a lot of Atlantic City in real life.  It has the glamorous casinos... and the rest isn't so glamorous.  As for the lack of agency... I never saw much agency blue side either.  You either perform heroics, or you don't.

 

To each his or her own.

As the kids say, "Let's get this b-red!", amirite?

[Seed22]

12 hours ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

Do they? Really? Could you show me those arcs where you actually have choices that are made, even superficially?

The new arcs by HC are the only real example of this, I admit. Was trying to be nice to blueside but yeah nothing outside of that to be honest. Quite sad really

[Seed22]

9 hours ago, Rudra said:

Moonfire: 23-28 (Kheldians only for team lead?)

That can be started by anyone now. Back in the day it could only be started after getting a badge for defeats I think.

[Wispur]

For me, there are two things that kill Redside for me.

1 - No convenient, Open Starting Area Hub like Atlas to just hang out in and see and chat with new players.
The current Red-side starting area is very cramped, dingy, and just not nice to hang out in.
Even what's happening in Mercy's starting area makes no sense.  Why are these people being rounded up, who are they? What's going on?

2 - The Storyline fails to deliver on what was promised.
On Blueside, I'm an appreciated Hero right from the start, saving people, stopping crimes, and having citizens thank me for my efforts.
On Redside, I'm a minion running errands and most of the time I'm fighting other bad guys instead of good guys.  The "Villain" fantasy just isn't there.

Edited January 21 by Wispur

[Psi-bolt]

On 1/20/2024 at 9:12 AM, Parabola said:

I don't like the zones, or the enemies, or find the content any more engaging than blueside. I suspect that part of the problem is that heroing is reactive and so fits the medium, villainy is supposed to be proactive but you can't do that with pre-written content. So basically you end up doing missions that are almost indistinguishable from blueside missions but with a grimy coat of paint.

 

This exactly.  I  don't have any particular issue with playing the bad guy, but the structure of the content really doesn't allow that.  It's hard to create that illusion that your villain is being proactive, but CoV just doesn't do it much at all for me.  SWTOR did this a lot better IMO, where you character had minions who brought schemes to your attention.  Only at the beginning were you kind of a lackey, later on you really felt like a mover and shaker.

[Rudra]

45 minutes ago, Wispur said:

On Redside, I'm a minion running errands and most of the time I'm fighting other bad guys instead of good guys.  The "Villain" fantasy just isn't there.

On blue side, you spend approximately the same amount of time being a go-fer or courier as you do red side. I'd say more time since there are more missions and a lot of them require you to drop off some nitnoid that makes no sense for you as the hero to have to drop off. And in comics, when you read from the villain perspective at least, and is also sometimes shown from the hero perspective, the villains are always competing with each other or fighting with each other. They spend more time trying to seize power and territory from each other than they do fighting the heroes until you get to the top tier villains.

[The_Warpact]

One of the things that always go me was when you rob a bank/casino/etc there is no large inf bonus.

C'mon man I just robbed a bank and got 20 inf for disintegrating a guard.

[Cheli]

I am a diehard RPer which means I'm self-aware enough to recognize that the RP-related reasons a lot of people in this thread cite - the nature of the story, or the writing, etc - have basically nothing to do with why more people play blueside.

 

The overwhelming majority of people play blueside because... it's where the majority of people play. That isn't really a helpful answer but at this point in the game's life it's the one with the most explanatory value. You can cite various reasons for why blueside hit this 'critical mass' at some point in time - people want to play 'good guys', the game launched as COH and most people who played it started blueside and feel more at home/nostalgic playing blueside - but the reality is that by now the reason is purely utilitarian. People want to be able to play with other people. Even people who don't necessarily want to play with other people -have- to, and there aren't dozens of groups for weekly TFs or itrials or whatnot forming redside with regularity. I prefer redside for a WIDE variety of reasons - I always find the faction of monster-people, moral ambiguity, darker-and-grittier more attractive aesthetically - but my roster is overwhelmingly bluesided simply because they have to be for me to get anything done. It's not all that different from asking 'why do megaservers form' in other games with fairly small player populations: because those servers sustained a stable population to play with for long enough that people from other dying servers want to be there to do stuff.

 

If you're looking for something beyond that, my feeling has always been that the majority of people who play the game do view it as city of 'heroes'. That's the version of the game that released originally that most people were familiar with, or that attracted them to the community in the first place. I get the sense from most people I talk to that playing redside is an occasionally-fun detour or tourist-trap you take every once in a while, but not something they invest in seriously or full-time. 

[PeregrineFalcon]

On 1/19/2024 at 6:48 PM, Dev Unitas said:

I'd simply like to ask why people personally think this is, beyond the clear recursive chicken-and-egg situation.

1. The zones are visually unappealing. Dark, dingy, dirty, and the sky is always overcast. Multiple psychological studies have shown how this adversely affects people and makes them uncomfortable enough to leave an area.
2. The stories are horrible. I wanted to play Dr. Hannibal Lector with super powers, instead all I get to play is barely-super lackey and every contact I talk to is like "Go do this stupid mission that I don't want to do, and then make me a sandwich, b*****h."
3. Villain characters can't do anything villainous. I actually talked with Positron about this in the retail forums. We can't beat up pedestrians and steal cars like in GTA. We can't make plans to take over the world, or Arachnos, or anything else for that matter. No villain secret lair in a hollowed out volcano, on an island, or hidden under the ice in the arctic. Instead, we spend most of our time attacking other villains, that makes us different than heroes how exactly?!? The ability to kill civilians in Mayhem missions (the only villainous thing you can do) was only added to the game after The Snap.

 

On 1/19/2024 at 6:48 PM, Dev Unitas said:

As a follow-up question, what would you think is a good solution to increasing general interest in the Rogue Isles?

Make several entirely new story arcs, starting around level 10 or so, and go all the way to 50. A player could choose to start one arc, and one arc only. One might be the "World Domination" arc. Another might be the "Depose Lord Recluse and take over Arachnos" arc. Another arc might be the "I just want to build a secret base in a hollowed out volcano and sacrifice people to the ancient gods" arc. And these arcs should have the villainy turned up to 9 or 10. Darren Wade should be shown in a cutscene going "Daaaaaamn! I can't believe you actually did that."

 

You know, actual villain stuff.

 

I know that I'm talking about a ridiculous amount of work. But, without that, and a ton of time and effort to advertise the new arcs to the players, villainside numbers will never increase.